


For Luck

by manycoloureddays



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/F, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 14:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21321538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manycoloureddays/pseuds/manycoloureddays
Summary: ‘And you know what else is really fucking infuriating?’ Robin tries to punctuate her words with a jab to Steve’s chest, but he’s still holding her wrist, checking for a break she already knows isn’t there.
Relationships: Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler
Comments: 10
Kudos: 209





	For Luck

**Author's Note:**

> for the anonymous prompt: You’re leaving for something dangerous and I can’t help but kiss you
> 
> set in the post season three 'verse where hopper makes it out and then i get to make it up as i go
> 
> thoroughly unbeta'd, so sorry for any mistakes!

‘And you know what else is really fucking infuriating?’ Robin tries to punctuate her words with a jab to Steve’s chest, but he’s still holding her wrist, checking for a break she already knows isn’t there. 

They’re in the Wheeler’s bathroom, Robin up on the sink, Steve moving back and forth between her and the medicine cabinet, looking calmer with every scrape he wipes clean and band-aid he applies. They’ve both had worse injuries, but it never stops him from worrying.

Mostly her arm just fucking hurts. Less because of the monster that’s chosen to fuck with them this week, and more because when she had started towards it’s left flank where it was clearly injured, weak, Nancy had yanked her back, darted in herself, made the kill and had the talon scratches on her ribs to prove it. 

And while Nancy took care of herself, only letting Mike close enough to help her clean the wound, Robin got Steve Harrington’s Specialty Bathroom Medical Treatment. 

The idiot had tagged along to a first aid training day with Hopper at the end of last summer and thought he had a medical degree. 

‘Tell me,’ Steve prompts, ‘what’s really fucking infuriating?’ Because despite her current complaints he’s actually a fantastic friend. Annoying and ridiculous and a complete dumbass, but a genuinely good friend. Her best friend.

‘I am older than all of you were when you started fighting monsters. You were seventeen, Dustin was twelve. The kids were _ twelve _ , Steve! And I’ve been doing this for a year now. I think I know what I’m doing.’ 

She can hear petulance leaking into her voice and stops talking. 

The thing is, Robin gets it, okay. She gets it. She is the newest person on the inside of Hawkins batshit supernatural underworld, and the others, including the six fifteen year olds, feel the need to make sure she doesn’t get herself killed. It would be nice to have so many people watching her back, standing beside her unequivocally, if it didn’t come with a side order of  _ because we don’t trust you not to die if we leave you alone for five goddamn minutes. _

In the last year Robin has been tied up by Russians, drugged with truth serum, come out to Steve Harrington on the floor of a toilet cubicle, met multiple monsters from the Upside Down, learned what the fuck the Upside Down was, got her second job after her first job blew up, accidentally come out to a bunch of kids, been forced into more discussions about Dungeons & Dragons than she cares to remember, fought some more monsters including a Kelpie that nearly killed her and also something that was maybe a griffin that kidnapped Nancy Wheeler, argued with Dustin about the possible existence of the Mothman and Bigfoot, put in more hours researching things that should not logically exist than Steve ever put into study for school, actually learned Russian because she couldn’t get it out of her head, and still they don’t trust her. 

Steve reads her mind. She kind of hates that he can do that now. 

‘It isn’t that she doesn’t trust you, you know.’ He says it quiet, the way he always talks about Nancy. Eyes downcast, rueful little smile. 

Robin groans. Turns out, whether Hawkins weird energy has made Steve psychic or Robin is just really that obvious, he knows her better than she knows herself. 

‘This isn’t about her. Everyone does it. We’d only known each other for a few weeks and you took a beating to save me.’

Steve scans her face a final time and, deciding by the arbitrary measure of the not clinically trained, pronounces her properly first aided. Then he shrugs. ‘It wasn’t just for you. Dustin and Erica were there too.’ Like taking a beating for any of them was nothing. Like coming out of it bloody and bruised and definitely concussed was a mark of simple friendship. 

‘Steve,’ she says, and it comes out more like a whine.  _ Steeeeve _ . She kicks her heels against the sink.

He sighs. Hands on his hips in what Max and Mike have taken to calling his Mom Pose. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Robin? If this is about, I don’t know, us trusting you to have our backs? You don’t have to worry about that.’

He says it so gently and he looks so uncomfortable that Robin believes him. 

‘I trust you with their lives all the time.’ 

He means the kids, but he also probably means the others too. Jonathan, Joyce, Hopper, Nancy. And now she’s had some space, has licked her wounds, and, for now at least, acknowledged that her pride might need to be buried, Robin can see that he does. 

‘And those kids don’t ever back down from a fight, but if they let you join them in one? THat’s trust too.’

Steve starts packing away Mrs Wheeler’s first aid stuff, throwing out all the bloody cotton balls and attempting to wipe down the sink with Robin still mostly in it. ‘For the rest of it though. You need to put on your big girl pants and talk to her.’

Her stomach does the stupid flippy thing it’s taken to doing any time she thinks about talking to Nancy, and then her heart does the follow up guilty feeling right after. The guilty feeling sounds a little like  _ Steeeeve. _

Nancy is. A lot of things. But Steve is important. He’s her best friend. 

Steve stops what he’s doing, steps into her space again, and for the first time since he started patching her up he looks her in the eye for more than half a second. He’s smiling, small but there. He grips her shoulder, pulls her in close until their foreheads are almost touching, then leans closer and presses a kiss above the bruise near her hairline. 

‘I love you, dingus. Both of you. You think I don’t want you to be happy?’ 

‘That’s my line,’ she sniffles. Dropping her head to his shoulder, she slings her arms around his middle, and holds on. ‘Dingus.’

*

When they make it back to the kitchen Mike and Nancy are sniping back and forth in the way, Robin has come to learn, means they are both in a good mood and violently caring at one another. It’s a weird sibling thing that she doesn’t think she’ll ever fully understand, but then Steve shoulders her out of the way so he can get to the fridge first and she thinks maybe she does. 

‘For god’s …’ Nancy mutters darkly. ‘Where the fuck are they keeping the platters now?’

Mike rolls his eyes and picks his sister up to move her out of the way. Nancy let’s out an undignified squeak, shoving at him when he drops her unceremoniously. 

‘They’re up here,’ Mike reaches them down off a shelf so high that he’s surely the only person who lives here who can actually reach it. ‘Shit doesn’t stay in the same place when you move halfway across the country, you know that right?’

Nancy huffs. ‘I did not move halfway across the country. I  _ drove _ halfway across the country and then I drove some more, and then I came back, because for some reason everything supernatural seems to be centred on Hawkins and I want to know why!’

Robin watches, fascinated, as Nancy works herself up into one of her lectures. She stalks up and down the kitchen, turning randomly to open cupboards and drawers, shutting them without getting anything out. 

She’s talking about the ripple effect from the gate. Each time it opened the ripples travelled a little bit further, until it was sending out a beacon across the country. There’s the little furrow in her brow, just a tiny dent that Robin sometimes daydreams about smoothing out. 

‘And no one knows what the side effects could be, or if we could stop it permanently.’

Robin’s heard all this before. Knows why Nancy felt like she couldn’t go away to college just yet. Knows that Nancy chose to defer one of her many offers in favour of a solo, cross country, monster hunting, information gathering road trip. 

Mike rolls his eyes, and Steve mentions something about ordering a couple of pizzas, and Lucas and Dustin come in with empty bowls and leave with arms full of snacks, and Mrs Wheeler rings to let her children know that she and Ted are  _ fine thank you _ and at her mother’s place and there’s dinner ready for heating up in the fridge, and Robin’s eyes never leave Nancy as she paces up and down the kitchen, hands flying, still lecturing. 

She slows down after almost fifteen minutes and notices, finally, that Robin is the only one left in the kitchen with her. 

‘Uh,’ Robin starts, awkward now that the room isn’t full of Nancy’s voice, and there’s no buffer. Now that all that focus has been bottled back up and directed at her. 

Nancy heaves a sigh, shrugs, and then sort of half-smiles. ‘He hasn’t stayed put long enough to hear me finish talking since he was nine. Maybe ten?’ She laughs. She sounds a little embarrassed. ‘Sorry about that. I, um, I’m not very good at stopping once I get started.’ 

‘That’s fine.’ Robin knows how inane that sounds, but she seems to have misplaced most of her vocabulary this evening. She could listen to Nancy all night. ‘That’s, uh, I get that.’

Nancy nods. Her eyes shift over the kitchen like she’s looking for something to focus on that isn’t Robin. 

Robin can hear her own heartbeat in her ear, knows her face must be bright red. She has managed not to wind up alone with Nancy too many times when she’s back in Hawkins, because it always ends like this. Both of them too quiet, Robin too aware of everything she is and is not doing. Being around Nancy is exhausting. 

Then Nancy whips back around to face her, and she doesn’t have much room in her head for thinking. Because she has never seen that look head on before. She’s caught it in her periphery, from an angle, when one of the others has been hurt or upset, but Nancy is looking her dead in the eye and she is Worried. 

‘Robin, I’m so sorry. I got completely sidetracked. Are you okay?’ 

Robin nods. 

Nancy walks over to her, hands not quite touching the cuts and bruises on her face. She is so close, and Robin can see where she’s been biting her bottom lip, can see every freckle, every scar. 

She has never seen Nancy like this, up close. 

She’s seen Nancy Wheeler load a shotgun. She’s seen her shoot one. She’s seen Nancy Wheeler with her hair loose and sweat-damp, the opposite of prissy and put together. Nancy Wheeler, eyes cold and shoulders straight, standing steady between the people she loves and all the world’s darkness and never flinching. Nancy Wheeler with singed hair and a gash across her forehead and an unconscious dragon at her feet. Nancy Wheeler curled in on herself on Steve’s front porch, sobbing into his shoulder on the anniversary of Barb Holland’s disappearance. Nancy Wheeler smirking as her brother stumbles through explaining why there are two girls asleep in the basement without Mrs Wheeler’s permission. Smiling fondly at him later, when he’s not looking. 

Robin has never seen her like this. 

‘Steve patched you up okay?’ Nancy whispers. 

Robin nods again. 

‘Anything hurting? I’m sure we have painkillers around here somewhere, unless Mom’s moved those too.’

She looks like she’s really considering stepping back and away and out of Robin’s space, and Robin really doesn’t want that, so she shakes her head. Manages to get some words out of her mouth, and puts her foot in it. ‘No, really, I’m okay. My arm’s a little sore, but I’ll be fine.’

‘Your arm?’ Nancy asks, reaching forward. Robin lifts her right arm, and Nancy goes through the same motions as Steve, checking for a break. She holds Robin just as gently. Robin hopes Nancy doesn’t notice the way her hair stands on end, the goosebumps that run up her arm at Nancy’s touch. ‘I didn’t see it touch your arm …’

Robin, who has been watching Nancy’s face for minutes now, sees exactly when it clicks. She goes white as a sheet. 

‘Oh. Oh,  _ shit _ . Shit, Robin, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’ She lets go of Robin’s arm, reaches out to touch it again. She can’t seem to decide what would be more welcome, more comforting. ‘I just wanted to. God. I’m so sorry.’

‘Nancy,’ Robin says, reaching out and taking her hand. She had thought she would put it back on her arm, let Nancy know she wasn’t hurt too badly, that she trusted her, but Nancy presses their hands together, palm to palm. Robin can’t take her eyes off Nancy’s face, and Nancy can’t seem to take her eyes off Robin’s palm. 

She takes a breath, watches Nancy do the same, and then threads their fingers together. 

‘Really. I’m okay.’

Nancy looks unsettled still, when she manages to look away from their hands and finally, finally, back at Robin. ‘I know I don’t know you that well. Not as well as the others. But give me some credit, please. You were furious with me earlier.’

_ Ugh,  _ she thinks.  _ I hate it when Steve’s right _ . 

‘I was. But I’m not now. And it wasn’t about my arm, not really. It wasn’t about what you did, it was about why you did it. Or why I thought you did it.’

‘Why did you think I did it?’ Nancy says, voice steadier than Robin’s, because even when she’s unsettled she so goddamn brave. 

Robin shrugs. ‘I figured you didn’t trust that I could do it. That I could kill it on my own. Which, hey, I get it. Your brother was there. If I had a brother, I’d probably want to —’

But Nancy is shaking her head. ‘I want to say Mike can handle himself, because he’s still alive after this long, but really Mike can kind of handle himself and when he can’t he has El and the others when I’m not around. I’m not worried about Mike.’

‘But you are worried about me.’ She hates the way her voice sounds, flat and miserable. She still doesn’t let go of Nancy’s hand though, which is probably way more telling than she’d like it to be. 

‘Yes.’ Matter of fact. Just yes. Nancy worries about Robin’s ability to handle herself. ‘But not in the way you’re thinking.’  _ Huh _ ? ‘I know you can kill monsters Robin. I’ve seen you do it. And I might spend a lot of time on the road, but I do call home. Steve keeps me up to date. I just,’ she fades off, looking frustrated. 

Another new Nancy Wheeler: speechless. 

She uses the hand not currently wrapped around Robin’s to scrub her face. Smiles up at Robin apologetically, because steeling herself. 

‘I just want to protect you. Not because I have to, but because I don’t like seeing you hurt. Which is stupid, I know, because if I go charging in you could still end up hurt. Because if I pull you out of the way I can clearly hurt you. And I am so, so sorry about that, Robin. Really, I am. But I can’t help feeling like I should always be standing in front of you. Which, again, stupid. Because you are taller than me, and I can’t cover you if I can’t see you.’ She pauses, briefly, to take a breath, but even if Robin had the words to cut in, she takes off talking again at top speed. ‘I don’t just want to protect you though. I want to. I want to hold you hand. I want. I don’t know, but I want it. And I think, sometimes, when you look at me that you want it too. And if you do. Want it. I want you to have it.’ Nancy nods to herself. Like she’s finally found the right combination of words. ‘I want you safe and happy. I want you to have it.’ 

There’s near silence in the kitchen, aside from the humming of the fridge and the steady ticking of the clock, and the too loud beating of Robin’s own heart, still in her ears. But before Nancy can break the silence with the words that Robin can see building in her already, Robin leans down and kisses her. 

Kissing Nancy Wheeler might just be her favourite Nancy Wheeler yet. 

Nancy sighs into Robin’s mouth, presses in closer and harder. She’s all angles, and so small Robin thinks if she didn’t know her like she does she might worry about breaking her. But Nancy Wheeler is made of stronger things than most. 

She pushes up onto her tiptoes, winds her hands around Robin’s neck, and Robin’s own hands grip Nancy’s waist. She holds on. Moans when Nancy’s tongue touches hers, when one of Nancy’s hands finds its way down her arm to her side and then up under her t-shirt. 

They kiss, wet and hot and more than Robin was ever expecting. She knows what Nancy means. She wants. 

Nancy lifts herself up onto the counter, and Robin steps back in close, between her legs. She pulls away from Nancy’s mouth, ignoring the way she pouts, so she can kiss Nancy’s neck, suck a bruise into her skin. She has no idea what she is doing, her hands feel awkward, settling wherever is closest, but she does not want to stop. Nancy makes the best sound Robin has ever heard, crosses her legs behind Robin’s back and tugs her closer still. 

Robin kisses her way back up to Nancy’s mouth, presses an almost shy kiss to her lips, buries her face in Nancy’s shoulder and sighs. ‘Holy shit.’

Nancy giggles. Twists her fingers in Robin’s hair. ‘Yeah.’ She giggles again. ‘Holy shit.’

*

They’re a pretty good team after that. Well, after they talk about it a little more. Nancy still wants to stand between Robin and danger, but Robin manages to convince her that standing shoulder to shoulder is actually better because then she can have her eyes on Robin the entire time. 

‘This is supposed to be a big one. As big as that dragon,’ Nancy is saying as they walk through the woods. She has her shotgun and Robin has Steve’s bat, with strict instructions to bring it back in one piece. Dustin’s instructions, not Steve’s. The kid has a thing about it being Steve’s bat. 

‘We’ve handled worse.’

Nancy grins at her. 

They reach the fork in the path that Hopper had mentioned, where Nancy is going to go left and Robin is going to go right, so they can outflank it from this side of its den, while Steve and Hopper do it from the other. Robin lets go of Nancy’s hand. 

‘Kiss for luck?’ 

Robin bends down. She’ll never say no to that, and Nancy knows it. It’s brief, because they have a monster waiting for them in the dark, but it’s fine, because once they’ve killed it they’ll have all the time in the world.


End file.
